SIDEBAR

The Royal Botanical Gardens has become home to two spectacular honeybee hives that suddenly appeared, hanging from the underside of a bridge.

It might not sound like much. Bee hives are everywhere. But you hardly ever get the chance to see the inner honeycombs so closely — especially in recent years, when honeybee numbers have been dropping off dramatically.

One hive is only six metres from the pedestrian pathway, making for optimal viewing.

“You seldom see them in this kind of situation,” says Barb McKean, head of education at the RBG.

They’ve had honeybee hives before on the underside of York Boulevard, above a pathway leading to the Rock Garden, but the viewing has never been better than this.

She says some RBG patrons have expressed fear about the bees, but in fact, they are “very docile unless threatened directly … they have no interest in people unless somebody is poking the hive or threatening it some way. Then they’ll defend themselves. If someone stuck a stick in your house, you’d be nasty too.”

Honeybee numbers have declined in a big way and no one is sure why. Most perplexing is a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which the workers inexplicably abandon the hive.

But sometimes hives do extremely well, such as the house in Varney near Owen Sound that was the subject of news reports this week. The owner noticed honey dripping through the ceiling, only to later discover an infestation of 180,000 bees that had created 2,000 pounds of honey.